User>Driven

I've been using a new task list manager called Remember The Milk. I decided to check it out when I read that it was one of the first webapps outside Google to use Google Gears to allow offline access. I've been looking for that one single task list manager I could use offline and on that didn't suck like Outlook so I thought I'd give it a try.

Overall I like this little app, but it can't be my one task list tool. It has some inspired touches, but ultimately the fact that it was created on a shoestring by amateurs shows both in usability issues and product management missteps. Here are my thoughts on what works and what doesn't.

A Simple Interface

The interface is uncluttered and readableRTM is overall the most usable web-based task list manager I've come across. It has a simple interface that allows for quick entry and crisp review of task lists. It's quick to add a new task (though slow to add any details). The interface is also readable, very refreshing compared with ultra-busy Outlook.

Easy Categories

It's easy to move back and forth between categories via the tabs, unlike Backpack, OneNote or EverNote which make it harder to find and move between different lists. Tasks disappear when completed (unlike most Outlook views) but are still retrievable if needed.

You can assign priorities to tasks and also attach notes, a critical feature missing from many simple task list managers, including all of the above. These are the minimum metadata elements I think any task list manager needs, but RTM has more.

Tagging Afterthought

Tags provide an alternative navigation mechanism but access is limitedYou can assign as many custom tags as you like to any of your tasks. This allows you multiple cross-category ways of quickly finding or organizing your tasks. My tasks are categorized by venue (the place or manner in which they may be done) within categories like Seated (things I can do at my desk), Puttering (things I can do up and about the house) or Errands (things I have to go out to do). They are also tagged with more general topics like Home_Improvement, Finance, Family or Business.

This is the first time I've seen tagging used in this way and I like the idea. I have to admit, though, that the tags haven't proven as useful as I expected them to be. I think they'd be very useful for business tasks, but personal tasks seem to be easier to manage strictly by category. They would also be more useful if they were more accessible. Only in the Overview can you access the tag cloud that serves as a navigation mechanism.

Nearly There Dating

A feature RTM shares with Gootodo, Mark Hurst's online task list manager, is the ability to schedule tasks for dates in the future. This is a great way to simplify your current list because it gets things you can't work on now out of your view. Unfortunately, this feature only filters future tasks out of the Overview display, leaving them in the category displays which, you will see, one is forced to use often.

Anywhere Access

The nirvana for a productivity nut like me is to have one consolidated task list. To make that happen, you need to have access to your list wherever you are. PDA apps are too limited. Standalone desktops apps are inaccessible if you're away from you PC. Webapps are inaccessible if you're offline - except for RTM, that is, which uses Google Gears to allow access right in the browser whether you are connected to the net or not. You have to login before you go offline, but you can keep working if you then get on the train or walk out of Starbucks. This is superior to Google Reader (the first app to use Gears) which requires you to manually sync before you go offline.

Well-Intentioned Filtering

The overview is simple but mashes all categories togetherOne thing about RTM that does not work for me is the Overview UI. It's meant to be the cleanest, most minimal display in the product and it is well-intentioned. For maximum productivity, you need to focus on only what you're going to work on right now. The Overview filters out anything that's not due today. It also filters out tags and categories, leaving tasks marked by priority and sorted in priority order.

To be readable with more than 4-5 tasks, though, the Overview needs to be organized by categories and needs to allow you to check things off as you complete them. As it is with tasks in strict priority order, you have to read up and down the list to find something you can work on now, rather than just working on the first thing in a chosen category. I end up going back and forth between the overview and the category views trying to figure out what I should be doing.

Then once you've completed something, you have to click through again to the category view to check it off and get rid of it. The app is responsive, but this is too many clicks, too much switching of views.

Clunky Data Entry

Data entry requires three different sets of controlsI said that entering new tasks is quick but it could be much quicker. After you've typed in the text of your task, you're going to want to assign it a priority, put it in a category, give it a date and maybe add a tag or two. To do that you need to use a pull down menu (twice) and a side panel after you've entered the task itself. Follow me here. That's click (the Add Task button), type, click, click, click, click (to assign priority and category via the menu), click, type (to assign the date), tab, tab, type, enter (to enter a tag) - all for one task. All of this should be doable with one form, one click and typing separated by tabs.

The interface looks like it started with a simple design and got busy as successive layers of functionality were added without revisiting the basic elegance that is the best feature of the app. 

Questionable Integrations

Another feature RTM shares with Gootodo is email integration. This is a great idea in concept because people so often use their email inbox as a to do list. Forwarding an email to your RTM account allows you to clean out your inbox and gives you another way to access your central task list. Well, like I said, that's the theory. You have to remember or have your email program remember for you an arcane email address unique to your account. You can't date, tag, categorize or prioritize your task via email. The task arrives in your RTM inbox with the subject line as the task name and the content of the email as an attached note. You then have to add all of the metadata to know what to do with this task.

What's really needed is not to send an email out to a separate task list, but to tag your email with a task, retaining the linkage between the two. This would allow you to complete your task and then get back to the email and let the person who sent it know you've done what they asked. The sprawling open source project Chandler is attempting something like this but they seem to be reinventing Outlook in the process.

iPhone and iPod Touch integration makes more sense than syncingRTM also syncs with Windows Mobile. I don't know why I would want this, though. Either I have a connected device that lets me access the web version of the app, or I have a stand-alone device, in which case I probably want to use the built in task manager. Having my list in two places that I sync once or twice a day would make it too easy for me to get my lists out of sync. RTM has recently added iPhone and iPod Touch integration, though, that looks very slick and makes more sense since you are essentially just accessing one instance of the webapp via a smaller browser.

There are integrations with Twitter and RSS feeds as well but I don't see a lot of utility in these things. More access modes does support the "one list" concept, but beyond web and offline access I'd rather see them focus on core usability issues.

Uncertain Business Model

Windows Mobile syncing was RTM's first paid feature. (iPod integration is the second.) RTM claims to have 300,000 registered users but they recently added a Pro subscription that costs $25 per year. A free version combined with a more sophisticated paid version is a classic business model but there is not enough differentiation here to make me want to upgrade.  I imagine over time they will build more compelling features. I hope they do that (and address some of the issues I've highlighted here) so they can keep the business running. They seem to have been running it for a couple of years now with no revenue, so I give them props for perseverance.

Overall, as I said above, I like this little app. It's got a clean interface, the right basic features, and access when I need it. It's also free. So why am I not raving? Aside from some of the more basic usability issues, the lack of a properly filtered overview and the lack of effective email integration stand in the way of it becoming my one task list manager. Without those things, it just won't scale to the number and variety of tasks I manage at work.

I continue to use it at home for my personal tasks like remembering to do the bills every week or run errands. Meanwhile, I continue to search for that one app that will hold my one, universal task list with ease, integration and sophistication. 

Last week I wrote about how Google Gears has made it possible for webapps to operate offline and how great that is for the everyday usability of webapps. Since then I've been trying out Google Reader, the first Gears-enabled application on the web and a pretty good RSS feed reader.

It is pretty darn good for a v1. Below is what I like and don't like about it, but first, why I prefer feeds to email and why (if you are as overwhelmed with email volume as I am) you will too.

Feeds are better than email

If you're like me, you get a ton of email every day. There's work email, personal email and the continuous tsunami of newsletters, promotions, digests, alerts and other commercial email - and that's not even counting the spam that gets only partially filtered out. And if you're like me you spend a lot of time just scanning it, deleting stuff you don't want, absorbing a few things you can read quickly, and flagging things you mean to read later (but more likely than not won't have time for). In fact, a lot of people I know use just about every idle moment in this scanning activity, frantically trying to stay ahead of the overwhelming tide of messages.

Happily, feeds are a whole different use model. Instead of the constant push of email updates to your creaking inbox, feeds allow you to pull content whenever you are ready to read it. This is a much less stressful way to interact with electronic content you want to see. It's much like time shifting with DVRs and Netflix. Instead of watching whatever is on TV when you happen to be free to sit down, your TiVo or ReplayTV allows you to pick the TV show of most interest to you at that moment from among everything that's been recorded but not yet watched. Netflix works the same way, allowing you to rank movies and TV shows on DVD and have them delivered to your home in that order.

Feed readers provide you a listing of the last several entries of content to which you've subscribed, such as from a blog, news service, comic strip, product review site, or what have you. You can subscribe to your favorite content and then have it all organized in your reader when you have time to look at it. So instead of worrying about keeping up with your inbox, you can reserve email for truly time-sensitive subjects like the note from your sister or your boss, then catch up with your feeds when you're more relaxed.

Firefox Live Bookmarks lets you organize your feeds into foldersMy favorite way to handle feeds was to use Firefox's Live Bookmarks feature. Live Bookmarks organized all my feeds into folders. I placed these on my links toolbar organized into a few major folders by topic. Scanning for new content was just a click or two away. But I could only get at this content on my laptop, leaving out using either my home Macs, my Crackberry or any other connected device. And I could only get at the content when connected, leaving out the two hours I spend on the train every weekday - an otherwise prime time for catching up.

Google Reader is more flexible

Enhanced with the ability to download all your feeds by Google Gears, Google Reader provides more flexibility in time shifting. Now you can read those feeds while you're disconnected from the web - on the train like me, or while lunching on a park bench, or at a hotel where the wireless is weak, or anywhere else you can't get a reliable connection. (And because it's a webapp, any connected device (including my Crackberry) can make my feeds accessible as soon as I log in, but let's talk about the new offline mode.)

Going offline with Google Reader is qucik and painless - if you remember to do itYou do have to click the little green "offline" arrow before you disconnect, but this allows the service to download the most recent 2000 entries from all of your feeds, and over a broadband connection I haven't seen this take more than a few seconds. Once you are in offline mode, the service acts like any webapp would when it's connected. Your content is all there for you to click around in and read. Well, almost. I'll get to weaknesses in a moment.

Content appears for each feed organized into panes like Gmail messages and complete with imagesThe interface is simple, though perhaps not as clean as Gmail. There is a familiar-looking left navigation bar with all of your feeds listed with the number of unread items in each. By default they are listed alphabetically but you can organize them into folders. On the right side of the page is the main reading window with a scrolling stack of entries for any given feed. Each entry is outlined and given a few lightweight controls, much like Gmail's message windows. It's all set up to let you scan for the content you like and read it without navigating through the clutter of an ad-driven website or find that one message you meant to read in your inbox.

(Just an aside on ad-driven sites. I like ZDNet for their reviews and I still subscribe to a few of their newsletters because I haven't figured out how to subscribe to a feed with just the subjects I want. But the clickpath from a ZDNet newsletter to an actual review is quite frustrating. If you read an interesting headline and teaser copy, you can click through to the article or review it refers to. Sort of. What you get is a landing page with ads with the same teaser copy you just read. If you click on the headline there, it takes you to the first page of the review - which is the summary page with nearly identical teaser copy and a link to the "full review." I can't decide if this is deliberate or just bad navigation, but the popover ads for various Ziff-Davis print publications give me a hint.)

Gum in the gears

Subscribing to feeds is easy provided Google can find themThere are a few things that interfere with the perfect enjoyment of my feeds. For one, it wasn't trivial getting all of my feeds into Google Reader. There is an import feature but it depends on you being able to export your feeds from your current reader and I couldn't figure out how to do that in Firefox. Neither Google nor Firefox 2.0 had any documentation on how to do this and there is no handy "export feeds" command I could find.

So I had to enter my feeds by hand. I have about 40, so I didn't think that would be too hard. Google Reader provides a feed search capability and this works most of the time. Occasionally, though, it couldn't find feeds by the name of the site, the URL of the site, or even the keywords in the name of the feed. In those cases, only the exact URL of the feed itself allowed me to find the feed. I don't know if this is Google or the feed publishers, but it slowed things down quite a bit.

Offline mode is easy to get in and out of, though once or twice it didn't seem to want to synch up my read items when I went back online. This is a beta, though, so I don't expect perfection. I also forgot to enter offline mode more than once this past week before leaving for the train, though, so I was out of luck. I wish there were a way for Gears to proactively download things in case you are caught offline unexpectedly. This is the model most thick client apps (like Outlook) use.

Some feeds only publish teaser copy making them worthless in offline modeThe most frustrating thing with offline mode, though, is feed publishers who allow only teaser copy to appear in their feed, requiring you to click through to their site for the full content. This makes offline mode useless, of course, because you can't follow the link to the site when you're not connected. I assume that feature exists so you'll be forced to view the ads on the site, but Pragmatic Marketing's site has no ads and their blogs show only preview copy in their feeds. Sorry guys, but that bites.

Feed me (and you too)

I'm addicted to feeds now and I've started unsubscribing to newsletters and promotional email from vendors and content providers I like because this method of keeping up with them is so much more under my control, so much less stressful. And Google Reader is my feed reader of choice at this point.

There are 334 feed subscribers to User>Driven as of this evening. So I am not the only one out there who sees the advantages of this medium. Check out Google Reader and subscribe to http://www.userdriven.org/blog/rss.xml to read this blog as a feed. Then post your thoughts as comments below.

It has its limitations, but Apple TV is doing exactly what I hoped it would for me - and doing so with ease and elegance.

My aging Squeezebox was no longer squeezing out the tunesMy mission in buying an Apple TV was to replace my aging Squeezebox wireless digital music player with something that could play our growing library of copy protected iTunes music. Apple TV does that beautifully and it also gives me access to my digital photos and to video content from the iTunes store - all wrapped in the kind of intuitive interface you'd expect from Apple.

Apple's elegant and easy packaging did not disappointPredictably, I even liked the packaging. (See my thoughts on poor packaging.) It's simple, containing no loose material, nothing unnecessary. It's easy to open, right down to the plastic sleeves the remote and the Apple TV unit come in, which can be peeled away with one hand. The documentation is a single black booklet that walks you through setup and initial use.

I bought a small Samsung TV to use with the Apple TV in our den. I couldn't help but laugh at how ungainly the packaging was for the TV compared with Apple's, and how much more documentation there was for a device that's been around for over half a century than for something on the cutting edge of technology.

Connections were simple and quickThe unit itself is handsome and solid. I connected to the new TV with HDMI and separately to the Cambridge Soundworks powered speakers that the Squeezebox used to feed using analog audio. (The speakers have digital coax input but Apple TV's digital output is optical. I've ordered a converter.) Despite the analog signal, the sound from the speakers is light years beyond the sound from the TV.

Setup was a breeze with the remoteSetup was as easy as PC Magazine's detailed review made it sound. In just a couple of minutes, I had connected to my secure wireless network, connected to iTunes, and started the process of sync'ing the unit with the iTunes library on my iMac. (Apple TV also works with PCs running iTunes.) Apple TV has only a 40 GB hard drive - about 33 GB of which is free - and my iTunes collection is 39 GB and growing. I think about the unit as essentially a big iPod, though, so it was easy to pick and choose my familiy's favorite playlists to sync and leave the rest of our collection behind. And you can actually stream anything you like directly from your Mac in real time, so I don't feel at all limited.

I got music streaming from my iMac in minutesI tested the streaming early on because not much content had sync'd to the unit yet and I found the experience to be nearly identical to playing things from the Apple TV hard drive. With my 802.11g wireless network, there was only a moment's buffering delay before music started to play and no noticeable stuttering in video streaming. This is much better than I could ever achieve with wireless streaming between my two ReplayTV units. This lead me to wonder why Apple bothered with a hard drive. Homes where the computer isn't always on or the network is not as fast could benefit, though. (See the 2nd paragraph on this page of the PC Magazine review for details about how this could be exploited.)

Spousal Aceptance Factor was quickly achievedApple TV spent all of Sunday playing our favorite playlists, newly envigorated with the protected content from the Apple. Mission fully accomplished on that front. My wife and I also spent an evening checking out movie trailers (downloaded on demand from Apple, I think), a music video, a short Pixar film, and the musical episode of Scrubs. All played nicely on our small screen. SAF (Spousal Acceptance Factor) was also quickly achieved.

Six from BSG looks good on the 19" screen but  I wouldn't try  TV on anything biggerThis brings up the reason we didn't hook Apple TV up to our main TV. Apple TV puts out 480p, which is as good as the Wii or a progressive scan DVD - both of which look great on the 27" HD Samsung we have in the family room. I previewed a bit of my current favorite sci-fi TV show and National Treasure on a similarly-sized screen at the Apple Store, however, and I must say the video quality was disappointing. Admittedly I was standing too close and was in a brightly-lit store, but I found the picture grainy and fuzzy - not at all what I'd expect from a DVD. This appears to be more a limitation of what's available currently via iTunes than a limitation of Apple TV, though, and I expect it will be rectified over time.

It's impossible to resits stopping to look at the photo montage screensaverI also sync'd up my favorite photo albums from iPhoto. I rarely print photos anymore, preferring to post them online for friends and family. I figured it would be nice to be able to see them away from the computer as well, though, and I was right. You can pick any album to display as a slide show (complete with Ken Burns effect) and it will pick music from your library to accompany the show. Also the screensaver can be set to display your pictures in a moving montage while you listen to music. I can just picture my parents enjoying this the next time they are over. The pictures looked great on the screen, reinforcing my thoughts about the capabilities of the hardware.

Speculation

Gratuitous comparison of Apple TV and Samsung remotesSome see in AppleTV a competitor to cable and satellite TV. I have at least one colleague who eschews cable for iTunes content. I only watch about 10 hours of TV a week; at iTunes rates, that would cost me about half what I pay to Comcast. The rest of my family watches a lot more TV so it wouldn't be economical for us, but it certainly could be for a single person or a couple without heavy TV-watching habits. And Apple says about 70% of prime time content is now available via iTunes. The video quality is still lacking, but that will improve and I could see this making sense for some people. Why pay for tons of channels and content you never watch and then pay for DVR service to capture it (not always reliably) so you can watch it when you want? Why not make it purely pay-as-you-go? I wish I could pay Comcast on an a la carte basis. As I've discussed elsewhere, this makes sense for content like TV shows you will watch only once or twice. The iTunes price for movies ($9.99) is still set more for ownership, though, than for rental, and I can imagine my hard drive filling up quickly with content I don't plan to watch again but can't bear to delete because I paid for it.

People have compared Apple TV unfavorably to the XBox 360 which allows you to purchase and download content directly rather than having to go through your PC. I expect this, too, will show up soon. Apple TV runs a modified version of OSX and it appears to be downloading movies trailers directly from the net, so I see no reason why you couldn't just buy a movie and download it after watching the trailer.

Suggestions for Apple TV

• Let me buy a movie with my Apple TV remote if I like the trailer as described above.
  
• I want to play my home movies on it. Like many people I have hours and hours of video but I haven't invested the time to edit much of it down to something watchable. I have iMovie and I know how to use it. Apple TV would be the perfect way to enjoy it from the comfort of my couch. Today some extra work with QuickTime Pro appears to be needed before I can play my home movies on Apple TV. This should be software-only upgrade in the near future.
• Don't stop playing my tunes if I go to look at pictures. AppleTV will continue playing whatever music you've told it while you browse your playlists, albums, artists, etc. But if you navigate out of music and into photos or some other part of the menu, it stops the music abruptly while you browse. Can't I do both at once? My Mac can. It shouldn't stop playing music unless I tell it to or start playing something else with an audio component. In fact, I wouldn't even play the music associated with a photo album if I am already playing some other music, but perhaps that should be a preference setting.
• I need volume control. I don't want to cram a lot of extra buttons onto the very elegant and simple Apple TV remote, but the one control it doesn't have is volume. I'm using the volume control on my powered speakers (which is a dial, not on a remote) and when someone comes into the room to talk I want to turn down the volume on the music. (This is also, sadly, sometimes necessary because Apple's Soundcheck feature does not do a perfect job keeping the volume even among songs.) So if Apple could make one or two buttons on the remote programmable (perhaps via a learning feature or a Harmony-style interface), I could control the volume through the same remote and be much happier.
  

Related links

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/feb2007/tc20070206_576721.htm?chan=technology_technology+index+page_today's+top+stories
Steve Jobs calls for an end to DRM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgOhVM7GN5o
Funny Xbox 360 video

As I've discussed elsewhere, I am continually on the hunt for good productivity applications. Problems with recent versions of Microsoft Outlook have had me trying out alternative task list managers. None lived up to my expectations and I'd changed over my laptop at work so I decided to give Outlook Tasks another try. I got working productively, but as you will see below, it involves heavy infrastructure and a lot of configuration - and even then usability is still an issue.

Outlook Taskpad is unusable out of the boxOut of the box Outlook Taskpad is amazingly useless. It retains completed items forever so that your nice little to do list is quickly cluttered with things you've already done. The default sort is alphabetical (even after you set dates and priorities for things). The Simple List display doesn't show priorities or categories and the Detail List is cluttered with more information than anyone other than a project manager for NASA would need.

Outlook Taskpad can be configured in many waysFortunately, Outlook is highly configurable and I have worked out a view that works for me. Right-clicking on the Taskpad header and selecting Customize Current View brings up a dialog with many choices. The first thing is to filter out tasks that are completed. You might want to review completed tasks at some point (say when composing an update email for your team or your supervisor), but you don't want them cluttering up your list of things to do today.

Hiding completed tasks requires advanced configurationOutlook Filters include a blizzard of options but, frustratingly, the simple ability to hide completed tasks (at least when in the combined calendar-mini Taskpad view) requires you to go to the Advanced tab and filter out all tasks with a status not equal to "Complete." Given most users never configure their apps at all, never mind going to the Advanced tab, this is an unfathomable oversight.

My custom view is filtered, sorted, categorized and simpleAfter filtering out tasks I no longer need to do, I want to make sure I display only the information about each task that I need. Everything else is noise. The default display includes a useless "Task" icon, a checkbox for when you complete the task, the subject and Due Date. I change this to include (in this order) Priority, the checkbox, Subject and Status. Priority allows me to, well, prioritize. The checkbox and Subject are needed, of course.

I use Status as an indicator for items where I am waiting on someone else before I can take further action. I wish I could sort those items down to the bottom of the list or the category, but there is no option to do so. I used to make them low priority to accomplish something similar, but then I tended to forget about them. Another option is to give them a Start Date in the future and set a reminder for that date. Tasks with future Start Dates don't appear in this view so the Task will be hidden until it's needed. This is a nice way to set yourself a reminder to follow up with someone if some time has passed and you are still waiting on them.

Next I use Group By to display everything within Categories. I use categories named after products or projects I am managing. I also have a category for Personal Tasks and one for General Tasks that have to do with work. This option keeps related Tasks together. Categories themselves can only be sorted alphabetically, though, so I assign numbers to each to keep them in the order I want.

Finally, I set the view to Sort by Priority and then by due date. I don't display due date (even though Outlook suggests this) because I naturally set a high priority on things that are due soon and I tend not to go to the trouble of setting due dates on individual tasks. Others may find this more useful.

This view works well enough for me. I get a good feeling whenever I check off a completed task and watch the list get shorter. And Taskpad immediately answers the question of what to do next. I'm not always in front of my laptop, though, so I need ways to access my Task list elsewhere. There are tools for this, but none is very satisfactory.

Outlook Webmail is not configurableIf your company is hosting an Exchange server for email, they can set up a web interface that (if you use IE6 or 7) mimics the default Outlook interface. Unfortunately it is not configurable like the actual client, but for occasional access from an unfamiliar computer it is functional. This is just the sort of client-server and web interface combo I was complaining that many Web 2.0 solutions lack. It's just too bad you need an Exchange server and that the Web interface is so poor.

Basic Task access via BlackberryAnother potential "anywhere" access point is your smart phone. If your company has a Blackberry Enterprise Server, for instance, you can access your Outlook email, Notes, calendar and Tasks via your Blackberry. You can sort tasks by Priority, Status, Due Date or Subject. The Blackberry does at least hide completed Tasks, but the default view includes all Tasks from all Categories and this can be overwhelming.

Sort contacts by Category on your BlackberryWith a couple of clicks of the control wheel, you can filter the list to a single category. This is much more manageable and I find works well for a shopping or errand list. For quick reference applications like this, the Blackberry interface works well. It's accessible and it synchs with Outlook automatically. I wouldn't want to try to organize my Task list (something I try to do at least once a day) this way, though.

It's the best solution I've found, so I am using Outlook Tasks regularly these days. It's a lot of work, though, to get it working the way I like and I am completely dependent on the enterprise infrastructure of my company. If I were a humble consumer or had a company with less IT moxie, I doubt there would be a solution for me at all.

And even after my IT department has done its work and I my configurations, usability issues remain. Many people use their email in box as a sort of to do list. Some (like me) even use colored flags to prioritize them. This essentially means that I have 2 task lists, though, which is hard to manage mentally and in a practical sense means I end up answering email before I get to the things I really need to do. Web 2.0 solutions like GooTodo allow you to email a task to your list so you can get it out of your in box. I'd like to see Outlook add that kind of feature.

Jim McGowan's elegant little Mac tool, Do It, allows you to link a file or URL to any task rather than attaching it as in Outlook. This allows you to quickly find something you need to complete your task without moving it out of your file system. I like this simple app and it even uses .Mac to synch between multiple machines, but they have to be Macs and you have to register each one to start the syncing. It's strictly peer-to-peer and there is no Web interface. Perhaps the iPhone will someday have a task list widget that synchs with your Mac.

Like many folks, I am tasked with tracking down a scarce commodity for Christmas. In my case, it's the Nintendo Wii game console. We've been to several electronics retailers in the area and the story is always the same. They are sold out; they expect to get more but they have no idea when; they expect to sell out again quickly when the new units arrive.

This story is familiar to anyone who wanted a PS3 this year or an XBox 360 last year, a Tickle-Me Elmo or a Cabbage Patch doll. So I was immediately intrigued when I read about a service that's just out of beta called iTrackr. The service claims to keep track of the inventory of such scarce commodities at a list of stores all around the country and to update it every few hours. You tell them the stores you want to track and they send you an email or SMS message when the item you want is in stock at a store near you. Pretty neat, huh?

iTrackr is also quite reasonably priced (in fact, I think it may be under-priced) at $1.98 for a month's tracking of a single product. I was happy to take a chance on finding a Wii even with this untried service for such a small amount. I was even able to pay via PayPal, which made it quick, easy and secure. I entered my data and was surprised to learn that 5 out of 12 retailers in my area showed the product in stock, including an EB Games near my office I'd been to only the day before. Unfortunately when I got to the store as they opened the next morning, they said they were out of stock and hadn't received a shipment the day before as iTrackr had claimed.

There are also some usability issues that hinder me in using the service but I want to give the company full credit for actively seeking feedback and for being responsive to it. They not only have a feedback link at the bottom of every page, but someone from the company replied to me by personal email over night with a partial workaround and news about new features planned that will go some way to addressing my issues. This is the sort of user-driven attitude that I predict will quickly correct issues with the service and maximizes their chances of a successful business long term.

Work and home 

Suburbanites like me may still find the 10-mile radius too limiting, however, even if it's 10 miles around two ZIP codes. Where I live there are many Targets, Best Buys, Circuit Citys, GameStops and EB Games I might like to track, but only two of them are within 10 miles of my home ZIP code. The iTrackr rep suggested I could enter the ZIP code of, say, the Target I wanted to track, but this has two issues. First, I don't know that ZIP code. I could look it up, but iTrackr should have a quick town-to-ZIP code lookup capability like the USPS website. Second (and more importantly), the stores I would like to track aren't clustered in one area. They  are scattered in all directions, 40 minutes one way or 40 minutes another. So to make a comprehensive survey of stores I'd be willing to drive to, I'd have to go through the setup process about half a dozen times. Worse, the service will only allow me to get email and SMS updates on my most recent settings, so I would have to go through this process every day myself, entirely defeating the purpose of the automatic alert feature that defines the service. They simply need to expand the radius to something large like 50 miles or perhaps list the 50 nearest stores regardless of distance from your home ZIP.

False positives

The second issue is the false positives. The EB Games near my office was one of 7 stores in my search radius that listed Wiis in stock, but I was skeptical after my first store visit. So I pinged the iTrackr rep again and the next day iTrackr popped up with a note letting users know that EB Games and GameStop stores (which are owned by the same company) are "very slow" to update their inventory and admonishing users to call before they visit the store. This is, of course, aggravating, but refreshingly honest.

I have to admit to some skepticism about the demand for the service outside the Christmas season. Yes, everyone has birthdays, anniversaries and other gift-giving occasions sprinkled throughout the year, but it is always Christmas that seems to result in the scarcity that makes this service potentially valuable.

But if it's possible to make money here, I think iTrackr has a good chance. Their consistent responsiveness to customers while deep in startup frenzy and holiday shopping season, shows they have the right attitude. If nothing else, they are retaining the goodwill of users by showing they care. More importantly, though, they are acting on the feedback by setting expectations in the short term and making improvements as they can.

Links

http://www.nintendo.com/home

http://www.itrackr.com/home.aspx